Stack of Boxes

This stack of boxes resides in my office, and has been growing for a number of years. Currently there are 107 in the display, with 3 more in my shop waiting finishing. They are about 3.5 inches cubed, with a bottom that allows them to be stacked easily and securely into the next. Most are simply finished with a coat of tung oil.

Originally they were a simple project to use up some scraps of pretty wood that had no other purpose other than burning. I think folks on this site understand how stuff like this gets out of hand in a hurry…. As my friend Chad says, “Anything worth doing, is worth overdoing.” Hence, I now have about 110 of these boxes, and I’m unlikely to stop anywhere soon. I wrote a blog about this recently, a part of which explains the sources of the wood and the stories they hold.

“I have boxes from the tree I used to play in as a child; the tree outside of my college dorm room window; several from trips to the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness; exotic wood from a casket maker in Nicaragua, as well as exotics from the local Rockler store. I have wood that came from the same tree that I built my own cremation urn from, and wood from the milking barn of the farm where my wife grew up. Trees that died 35,000 years before I was born, trees from my youth, from my adolescence, from these my middle years, and some borrowed from trees that will long outlive me.”